Tapping into the Pulse - Political Public Opinion Polling in Canada, 2013 by Éric Grenier

Author:Éric Grenier [Grenier, Éric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Canada, Politics, Polling
ISBN: 978-1-927967-04-1
Publisher: IndieBookLauncher.com
Published: 2014-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

With a precarious hold on the National Assembly and no obvious allies on the opposition benches, the Parti Québécois had moved quickly after the election, breaking tradition and presenting its budget in the fall. In February 2013, however, the party needed to present its budget spending estimates, marking another confidence vote. The estimates passed on February 21 by a margin of only one vote, as both the CAQ and Liberals voted against the government, the latter ensuring that not enough members were present to precipitate the government’s defeat.

No party had any reason to have confidence in its ability to win a snap vote had the government collapsed. The Liberals were still in search of a new chief, after Jean Charest lost his seat in the previous election and resigned as leader. Polls at the beginning of the year were giving the PQ an average of 32 per cent support, no different than its election result, followed by the Liberals at 30 per cent and the CAQ at 25 per cent. The PQ maintained its edge among francophones, but on who would make the best premier Marois was only one point up on Legault, at 23 to 22 per cent. Jean-Marc Fournier, interim leader of the Liberals, stood at 11 per cent.

The PQ’s vote was stagnant as the party suffered from the politics of austerity. With a pledge to balance the budget for 2014, cuts to welfare, education, and day care were particularly unwelcome for the groups that had voted the PQ into government in 2012. An unpopular health tax that had been imposed by the Liberals, and which the PQ had promised to rescind, was kept in place as the government found it could not forgo the revenue.

The party kept a different promise, however, in holding a summit on higher education in February. When the summit concluded, not every participant was happy with the compromises that had been made (tuition increases would be indexed, rather than raised significantly as under the Liberal plan) but it did put an end to the discontent among students in Quebec that had plagued Charest’s government and came to a head in massive protests in 2012.

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